Page 60 of Love What's Left
Sydney
One Week Later
Islide the baking stone with a loaded homemade pizza on it into the oven. Franki shifts Ian up against her shoulder and gives me a pep talk. “You bought those groceries. You cooked that pizza. And you’re going to eat it without a taste-tester. Because you’re a bad butt.”
I snicker, then stop trying to hold back my laugh. A few weeks ago, I’d have believed she thought “bad butt” was a reasonable swap for calling someone a badass, but I’d have been wrong. She’s just hilarious, and that ethereal voice of hers makes her sound so innocent that people don’t get it. “Henry is serious about never swearing in front of Ian?”
Her expression turns mischievous. “Yes. I’m actively compiling a mental list of swaps. When the time is right, I’ll use all of them on Henry in one long paragraph and dazzle him with my eloquence.”
“You two have frickin’ weird ideas of fun,” I say affectionately.
She laughs. “His assistant, Spencer, tried to get him to propose to you, instead of me. Can you imagine?”
“What?” I want to shake my whole body like I walked into a cobweb, but that would probably be rude. Seriously, though? Henry is good-looking, but he’s . . . he’s . . . if someone took my husband’s angelically handsome looks but gave him Loki’s attitude when he’s wearing the horn helmet and had him cosplay a mildly diabolical twin of Milo from the movie,Atlantis, that’s Henry—Oh my God, I’m so mean, but he would drive me up a wall. “Are you saying I used to date your husband?”Surely not.
Franki cringes. “Oh, no. It was just Spencer and his matchmaking. The man tried to set Henry up with everyonebutme. Henry shut it down immediately, but I wanted to—” She glances down at Ian, then back up at me. “I wanted togentlyplace my hands around Spencer’s neck and, politely, in a way that would not be distressing for an infant to overhear,squeeze.”
I snort as I tidy the counter, throwing away empty packages into the trash can under the sink.
“Even if Henry had gone for it, it never would’ve worked. You and Gabriel had already met. It was all over for him from that moment on. It took years before you admitted you were in a relationship, but everyone knew.”
I stop what I’m doing to eye her in consternation. “Why wouldn’t we admit to a relationship?”
“Bronwyn and Clarissa thought you were worried about attention from the press.” She hesitates, then says softly, “I thought you were afraid if the relationship fell apart, your friends would pick sides and freeze you out.”
My heart drops. I remembered thinking that if I slept with him, I’d lose my friends. Obviously, I worked for his father. I must have thought his dad would fire me too. “That makes sense.”
“We wouldn’t have,” she hurries to add. “But I understood how you felt. Gabriel is Bronwyn’s brother, and he’s known the rest of us since we were kids.”
“Dating him would’ve been taking the risk of l-losing the only people I had to fill in the . . . ‘family’ gap in my life,” I say.
“I told everyone to back off and stay out of your business.” She shrugs sheepishly. “He didn’t have a great track record with relationships before you. So, at first, we were glad you weren’t seeing him. We didn’t want him to break your heart.”
I swallow. “Did he?”
She shakes her head. “It was the other way around, if I’m honest.”
At my indrawn breath, she says, “Not your fault, but—It doesn’t matter. It worked out in the end.”
“Tell me.”
“You told me once that he was like a pizza fresh out of the oven. You loved pizza, but you knew you couldn’t trust it not to burn you, so you had to wait and test it.”
Shame curdles in my gut. “Did I say he was like my father?”
I’d jumped to the same conclusions this time around too, based purely on the most superficial evidence.
“Yeah,” she says quietly.
“So I punished him. Because I loved him and resented him for it?” Saliva floods my mouth. I press a fist to my queasy stomach.
She shakes her head. “I don’t think it was punishment. I shouldn’t have started this conversation. I don’t know the details, and he made mistakes too. You two figured it out in the end. You were so happy after you got married, and it’s not like you guys were miserable before that.”
She adjusts Ian, and he wraps his hand around her finger as she smiles at him. She looks up at me, her eyes still filled with humor. “The two of you were sobad at hiding your feelings for each other that it didn’t matter what you admitted to. You were already involved. And everyone already knew it.”
“He’s terrifyingly attractive,” I admit.
Franki gives a startled laugh. “All I know is that for years you arrived at every event together. The two of you would lock eyes constantly and have these conversations where neither of you said a word. You’d sit next to each other and eat each other’s food. You’d both disappear from the group at the same time and come back all flustered. You both took long trips out of town on the same schedule. He’d come back with a tan. So would you. Bronwyn was the one who figured out Gabriel owned your apartment and didn’t charge you rent.”
